Burlington doctor gets deferred sentence in prescription fraud case

Nov. 2, 2012

Written by

Free Press Staff Writer

Attorney General William Sorrell personally signed off on a deal last month that allowed the part-owner of the medical practice where he gets care to get a four-year deferred sentence with no jail time in return for pleading guilty to prescription fraud.

The Burlington-based doctor used false identities to obtain 288 prescriptions for various medications over a seven-year period, court records state.

Cynthia Haselton, 57 of Colchester, agreed to plead guilty Oct. 18 to a single prescription fraud charge involving the purchase of 49 Adderall pills in late 2011 from Costco Pharmacy in Colchester under an assumed name.

Haselton was a physician and a part owner at Primary Care Health Partners on Pine Street in Burlington. She left the practice in July and relinquished her medical license as the investigation into her conduct was intensifying.

She is now receiving treatment for her drug problem, according to her lawyer, Eric Miller.

Sorrell, in an interview, said his office concluded that a plea deal was appropriate in Haselton’s case because of her personal struggles and because her conduct did not involve drug diversion or other crimes.

“I approved the ultimate deal,” Sorrell said in an interview. “This was not a case where someone needed to go to jail. We felt this could be resolved without a trial. It seemed appropriate to us and we hope she gets help.”

Sorrell, in response to a question, acknowledged he personally receives his health care from the same practice where Haselton worked. He said he does not know Haselton personally and did not think the situation posed a conflict of interest.

“That played no part in my decision,” Sorrell said.

He said if that was a concern, he would not have helped prosecute officials at Fletcher Allen Health Care, where he has undergone surgery in the past. Years ago, several top executives of the hospital were charged with misleading the state about the true cost of a major expansion project.

Miller, Haselton’s lawyer, said his client’s drug problems came about because of a “family tragedy” as she endured depression and anxiety in the course of dealing with her husband’s deteriorating health while raising their children and working at her practice.

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Haselton, via Miller, declined to be interviewed.

“She began self-prescribing Adderall, a stimulant, which provided her with the energy and focus that she was lacking due to her depression,” Miller said. “Over time, Dr. Haselton became dependent on Adderall, and that dependency only deepened as her husband’s illness worsened.”

Haselton’s husband, Franklin “Gary” Haselton, died in 2010 from lung and liver cancer.

Impersonation, fake names

According to a Vermont State Police affidavit, Haselton impersonated a longtime friend and used three fake identities to obtain the prescription medications from three pharmacies in Chittenden County and one in Middlebury.

Most of the prescriptions were for Adderall, an amphetamine medication meant to treat attention deficit hyperactivity disorder but is addictive when abused. The affidavit said a “handful” of the prescriptions were for Vicodin and Lortab, which are pain-killer medications.

Haselton was the prescribing doctor for the fabricated patients and then pretended to be those patients when she went to pick up the pills, according to the affidavit. All of the drugs were paid for in cash.

The break in the case came in January when an employee at Haselton’s own medical practice got a call from the pharmacy at Costco Wholesale Inc. The caller was contacting the practice to report that the pharmacy only had half the medication available for a Nancy Tindal, who it thought was a patient of Haselton’s.

The employee at Primary Health Care Partners did not recognize Tindal’s name and decided to check the practice’s database to see who Tindal was.

“The database showed only Ms. Tindal’s address (with no street number), a date of birth and a Social Security number of 111-11-111,” the affidavit said. “Haselton had entered this information herself, which was unusual for a PCHP doctor to do ... Some of the prescriptions were written on Sundays, which was also unusual because PCHP is not open on Sundays.”

The Primary Health Care Partners employee, after probing the matter some more, concluded Haselton was posing as Tindal to obtain the drugs. The worker alerted investigators at the state Medical Practice Board in February, who in turn contacted the federal Drug Enforcement Administration and the state police.

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Jon Asselin, chief operating officer for Primary Health Care Partners, declined to discuss the details of the role played by the employee in uncovering Haselton’s conduct.

“We take patient care seriously, and it is always our top priority,” Asselin said in a statement provided the Burlington Free Press. “As such, employees are always encouraged to take appropriate actions to raise their questions or concerns. Such actions typically involve the use of established internal or external processes.”

On Feb. 6, the affidavit said, investigators met with Haselton, who told them she had written prescriptions for “various family members and friends,” including Tindal, who lived in Maine and was a longtime friend.

She said she and Tindal had an arrangement in which she would write out the prescriptions for Adderall and the two women would share the pills, the affidavit said.

Tindal, visited by investigators on May 30, told a different story. She said she had never been a patient of Haselton’s and had never received any medications from her.

“Ms. Tindal said that Dr. Haselton had called her a few months previously and told her she had obtained prescriptions in Ms. Tindal’s name and had claimed that she had mailed the medications to Ms. Tindal,” the affidavit said. “Ms. Tindal stated she wished she could help her friend, but she was not going to lie about this incident.”

The other three “patients” for whom Haselton prescribed medications turned out to be names of people whose identities were false, the affidavit said.

Miller, Haselton’s lawyer, said his client stopped the “self-prescribing” after she met with investigators and quickly sought help for her depression and drug dependency.

“Dr. Haselton has voluntarily undergone regular, random drug testing since March 2012 in order to demonstrate and reinforce her recovery,” Miller said. “I am pleased to report that her recovery is going well.”

No action by medical board

To date, the state Medical Practice Board has not taken any action against Haselton, although court records show its investigators have been involved in her investigation for 10 months.

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Sorrell, whose office provides an assistant attorney general to the board to help prosecute disciplinary cases brought before the panel, said that’s not unusual.

“Frequently, when there is a criminal investigation like this, the Medical Practice Board suspends its investigation until the criminal process is resolved,” Sorrell said.

In the cases of Joseph Abate and David Chase, two doctors who faced unrelated criminal charges in the recent past, that was not what happened, however.

Board documents show that the board stepped in and suspended the licenses of the two physicians while their criminal cases were in their early stages.

Abate, an orthopedic surgeon, was ultimately convicted of misdemeanor prohibited acts/lewdness charge involving female patients and admitted to board charges of unprofessional conduct. Chase, an opthamologist, was acquitted of criminal fraud charges, but found guilty of professional misconduct charges by the board.

David Herlihy, the board’s executive director, said a person’s Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination can make it hard for the board to undertake a misconduct hearing of a physician who is also facing criminal charges.

“I’m not going to talk about her case specifically, but when there are both administrative and criminal issues, it requires coordination,” he said. “I think obviously when a physician is convicted of a crime, especially a crime that relates to practice in the way that one does, it’s pretty high probability that we are going to have a case.”

Miller, Haselton’s lawyer, said he’s hoping to reach a stipulated agreement with the Medical Practice Board regarding his client.

“Dr. Haselton has accepted responsibility for her mistakes, has suffered significant punishment, and hopes that she will be able to use her experience to help others avoid those same pitfalls,” Miller said.